"If" by Rudyard Kipling

This poem has been contributed by Pramila Maheshwari.  It has been one of my all time favorites.  I had read it as a kid and it kept me company in some of my toughest times.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance of their doubting too
If you can wait and not not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about,don’t deal in lies
Or being hated don’t give way to hating
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you have spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build them up with worn out tools

If you can make one heap of all y our winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them :’Hold on’!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch
If neither foes or loving friends can hurt you
If all man count with you, but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it
And—which is more—you will be a man, my son